After conducting interviews with each one of the city’s 16 mayoral candidates, I’ve prepared the following quick guide to the race for the top office. Click on the names to hear or read short versions of our conversations.
Jeff Adachi – A resident of… …

Over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down for one-on-one interviews with all of the men and women running for mayor of San Francisco. It’s a remarkable race between 16 candidates.

They include the interim mayor (Ed Lee), two city supervisors (John Avalos and David Chiu), three former city supervisors (Michela Alioto-Pier, Bevan Dufty, and Tony Hall) and a state senator (Leland Yee).

Having such a diverse cast of characters made for a lot of interesting conversations.

While hearing policy points and platforms is important in making an informed vote, I was equally interested to hear how these candidates sounded not just as politicians, but as people. As such, I started every conversation by asking them to tell me something about where they lived in San Francisco. That proved to be an interesting icebreaker, and a good spot to launch into discussions of the issues facing the city. We’ve got candidates from all over – the Marina (Alioto-Pier), Chinatown (Pang), Polk Gulch (Chiu), the Excelsior (Avalos), Glen Park (Lee), the Castro (Baum), the Richmond (Rees), the Sunset (Adachi, Ting, and Yee), and one, ironically, living in public assistance housing in Pacific Heights (Currier).

I also was curious to see what kind of connection the candidates would make with me. Would they come across as if they were in a conversation? Or would they talk at me? Did it seem like they had their own agenda to push forward, or would they meet me where I was coming from?

Several of the candidates are seasoned politicians who clearly have plenty of practice performing before a microphone. I frequently found, however, that too much polish, and even encyclopedic knowledge of topics, can come across kind of wonky. Other candidates evidently had very little on-air experience, and in the course of conversing with so many people running for mayor, I found their candidness, for the most part, refreshing.

Finally, would they sound like somebody capable of leading the city? Charisma can come across through conversation, and I think you’ll hear how these candidates would relate with City Hall and the people of San Francisco.

In talking with so many people about the most important issues in San Francisco, I came to an encouraging conclusion. Having 16 people running for mayor can be overwhelming – but having so many qualified candidates is a real victory for the city, and it’s not something that has happened frequently enough. Another sign of a healthy democracy is a strong voter turnout – something that has also been lacking in San Francisco.

Election day is next Tuesday, November 8. The candidates have stated their cases. Now it’s time for the city’s voters to do the same.

You can hear short and long versions of Ben Trefny’s conversations with all of San Francisco’s mayoral candidates by clicking here.

For many people, nudity brings up strong feelings: it makes them uncomfortable, freaks them out. Whether it is about sexuality or simply decency is debatable. And, interestingly enough, one can turn to two politicians named Wiener to shed light on the subject.

Earlier this year, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted to exchanging “messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years.” He sexted. It’s a scandal. And it led to his resignation from the House of Representatives.

Here in the Bay Area, San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener – no relation – is trying to pass legislation controlling how much exposure local nudists can get away with. In Wiener’s Castro District, it’s not uncommon to see people walking around completely naked. Except maybe their shoes. Even Wiener’s predecessor, mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, thinks of them as part of the scenery.

But Supervisor Wiener isn’t so cool with it. He wants nudists to wear clothes in restaurants and cover public seating before sitting down. But while his proposals are fairly modest, much of the public’s response has been emphatic.

KALW’s Jon Atkinson wanted to get to the bottom of the controversy, so he dropped in on a nude model drawing class. Here, where the human form is appraised and appreciated, he tries to expose our differing philosophies of nakedness.

* * *

JON ATKINSON: I don’t think I’m a prude. But when Carrie Schwalbe disrobes – when she flings off her muumuu, and strikes a yoga-like pose – I have to admit, I feel a bit odd.

I’m in Livermore, with 13 artists for a weekly figure drawing session at the Bothwell Arts Center. I’d estimate that the median age is something like 70. Schwalbe, the model, looks like she’s in her 30s. She starts by sliding into some rapid-fire contortions, but after a while, she begins to hold each pose for longer intervals. She’s impressively still, only her eyes move. It’s like she’s wearing a mask.

Schwalbe’s a member of the Bay Area Models Guild. Artist Bruce Klein drove over an hour from Modesto to work with her.

BRUCE KLEIN: This particular woman’s very good.

I thought that people who spend several hours a week studying naked bodies might have a distinct perspective on the nudity question. So here I am, waiting, ironically, for Schwalbe to take a break and put her robe back on.

When the artists put their brushes down, my mic comes out.

CAROLYN RAMSEY: There’s places where I’d rather not see it.

Even though she’s been figure drawing for around 60 years, Carolyn Ramsey doesn’t have much tolerance for the type of nudity you see in the Castro.

RAMSEY: I don’t find that particularly attractive.

But many of the artists I meet welcome the chance to observe nakedness. And it has nothing to do with whether or not the person is attractive.

KEN BALL: I think it is because it’s a beautiful form, but … I’m interested in people.

That’s Ken Ball, a professional illustrator.

BALL: I also am a photographer, and I enjoy taking pictures of people. And I just … like some people are interested in flowers, and some people are interested in still-life’s, I just happen to be interested in people, and observing them and watching their actions.

For these artists, figure drawing gives them the chance to learn more about themselves and others – and so, it makes sense that they’d find prudishness a little puzzling.

HILARY KAUFMAN: I think it gives me more of a connection.

That’s artist Hilary Kaufman.

KAUFMAN: You’re recording something of the humanity.

CARRIE SCHWALBE: Ideally, it’s a duet.

And that’s Carrie Schwalbe, the session’s model. She gets that, when she’s standing on the platform in front of everyone, she’s under heavy scrutiny. But she thinks that, ultimately, she’s less exposed than the artists are.

SCHWALBE: I think the artists themselves are exposed when they’re drawing, because all of these things that are very valued in our culture, yet they’re abstract, you can’t see them. You can’t see someone’s inherent talent, or how hard they’ve been working, or how much experience they have, until it is laid bare on the page. And I’m not worried about them looking at me, because people could be looking at them for years.

The way the people at the Bothwell Arts Center see nudity couldn’t be further removed from the way it’s being discussed in the media and politics. And it raises some questions for me: Why should our bodies strike us as inherently unsightly? And what does that say more generally, about our attitudes toward each other, and ourselves? I don’t know if this means that I’m becoming a nudist, but I will think about enrolling in a drawing class.

In Livermore, I’m Jon Atkinson, for Crosscurrents.

What do you think about public nudity? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

It’s autumn again, and that can mean the start of a variety of seasons: school, football, and television. But for the more civically-minded, fall means election season. Here in San Francisco, autumn is bringing the city’s first ranked-choice mayora… …

A conversation with mayoral candiate Bevan Dufty; comedian Will Durst has had it up to here with pledges; a bit of color in the darkest of times; genre-crossing at the Hong Kong Cinema Festival; how to be a rock star without learning an instrument; and… …

San Franciscans will see a fierce competition come to a head in less than two months. There are 16 contenders in the race to be San Francisco’s next mayor, and here at KALW News, we’re talking to all of them.

But one candidate that might be familiar to some San Franciscans is former supervisor Bevan Dufty. Dufty served for eight years representing District 8, which includes the Castro, Twin Peaks, and Glen Park. If elected, he would be the city’s first openly gay mayor.

KALW’s Ben Trefny sat down with Dufty in the KALW studios and asked him to start off by talking about his neighborhood.

* * *

BEVAN DUFTY: I’m Bevan Dufty. I was a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for eight years, and I’m one of 16 candidates for mayor in the 2011 election. I am lucky to live in the Lower Haight, and I can walk within two blocks and touch five different streetcars, which is super cool.

BEN TREFNY: The Lower Haight is one neighborhood in San Francisco that is actually a pretty ethnically diverse population. That’s been changing a little bit with the Western Addition and that sort of thing; there’s been gentrification of the Western Addition. Tell me your impressions of that and that aspect of that neighborhood.

DUFTY: I see myself as a candidate for mayor who’s running with a black agenda. I say, you don’t have to be black to have a black agenda. But our African American community is in crisis in San Francisco. Everybody running for mayor can tell you that we’re at 4% in the Census and there’s been an out-migration task force.

But in my opinion you need a mayor that every day is working to empower and make healthy a community that’s really been neglected and marginalized. We’ve probably lost more African American businesses in the last decade than in our city’s history. And sometimes people are leaving for valid reasons. There are certainly middle-class black families that are moving out to the suburbs for bigger homes, safe neighborhoods, and better schools. And so it’s a combination of factors that has brought this about.

But I think it’s a huge issue. I grew up in a black community; I grew up near Harlem. My mom worked in the Civil Rights Movement. My godmother was Billie Holiday. I worked for Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to serve in Congress. And I worked for mayor Willie Brown. But I can tell you, having grown up in New York, lived in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we have no black middle class and we have the weakest black community anywhere. There are only five African American elected officials in San Francisco. And guess what, three of them have endorsed me and I’m proud of that.

TREFNY: So what do you do to retain or bring back the black population?

DUFTY: Well, a couple of things. First, you focus on businesses. I think that we have to have a two-pronged strategy. From the public sector, it’s difficult. There’ve been a lot of court decisions that have complicated minority business contracting. When I worked on Capitol Hill in the ‘70s, we started with a 10% set aside in a number of federal programs. It was fairly straightforward.

Now, it’s much more nuanced and complex. With local business ordinances, minority and women business ordinances, disadvantaged business ordinances, what you’re finding oftentimes in the public sector is that black firms and other minority firms are put into teams in order to meet goals that are established for minority business participation. But guess what: The prime wins that contract, and a black firm that might have 10% of the job gets a scope-of-work change where you negotiate with the city agency. And all of a sudden you go from 10% to 2% and your work doesn’t start until the third year of the contract.

What are you doing? You’re laying people off; your business isn’t really sustainable. So I feel that from the mayor’s office, we have to be looking at everything major that we’re doing. Whether it’s Lennar, whether it’s high speed rail, whether it’s America’s Cup, we’ve got to be looking for opportunities because those black-owned businesses are the most likely to hire, mentor, and elevate people who are African American working with them.

TREFNY: So you talked about trying to represent the interests of people who are leaving San Francisco. One other group that’s doing that is families. There’s a well-documented loss of families in San Francisco. You yourself are a father and your daughter is now going to a public school in San Francisco. I’d like to hear what you think is the problem in San Francisco that is causing families to leave? And what are you going to do about it?

DUFTY: We have a contract with the school system and during my time on the Board of Supervisors, I chaired the City and School District Committee. It was a committee that hadn’t met for a couple of years because it had become kind of a battleground where city supervisors would question and browbeat school district staff about different issues. And I said, let’s start over. Let’s think about how the city should be partnering with the school district. Let’s think about: How are we providing Muni services? How are we providing mental health services?

What we realize is, there’s a reason San Francisco has the highest percentage of non-public students of any major city in this country. That’s because the private, non-public schools have been really good at giving parents certainty, advanced knowledge of where their kid’s going to go, and are just really much competitive than we are in this city.

We changed this past year how school admissions are done. Fifty percent of it is now based on your neighborhood school, and 20% of the city is what’s called a CTIP, a Census Track Integration Plot, which means that you live in a neighborhood with a lower performing school, and you can get a preference to go to a neighborhood school that you may feel better about. So, I think the thing that we’ve got to do is create a success plan for each of our schools: our elementary, middle, and high schools.

A lot of it right now is around language immersion. If you see the schools that are rising, you look at Star King, for example, you look at Fairmont – these are schools that have language immersion programs. I think the studies have shown that if you want young children to be introduced to thinking in a bilingual manner, and being taught in that manner, it’s like brain food. It just percolates their thought process and their brain development and it’s very important.

TREFNY: What is another one of your top priorities that you would focus on as mayor?

DUFTY: Well, I’ve talked about a black agenda, so that’s very important to me, but I’m going to flip the script and tell you that as an 18-year city employee and someone who’s worked in public service all my life, I’m a believer that city government can be dynamic. I believe that we can be as competitive and creative as the Googles or the 10-person startups that explode that we all know about within a year or two.

I love the people that work for the city. As much as there is an anti-public employee sentiment, let me tell you, I can tell you by name the people that chase the stray dogs, that operate the 29 bus, that write the parking tickets, that work in the libraries, and that, sadly, I’ve met in the emergency rooms when I’ve had to see constituents who’ve been stabbed or shot. I know the people who work in this city. And they are great people.

What they need is a mayor that is not a straight-up politician. A mayor that is not trying to go somewhere, a mayor that is not going to tell you that the solutions to our problems lie outside our borders, and that’s why they bring in department head after department head from other parts of the country to come here, and guess what they find when they get here? They have to get their spouse a job, they have to get their kids in school, they have to find a house in this very expensive housing market, and then what do you get? You get a commission, anywhere from five to 11 people, you get 11 of us wild ones on the Board of Supervisors, you get a mayor, and you get tons of advocacy groups. And over and over again, I’ve seen people fail because they don’t understand San Francisco. Yes, we’re a process city, but we can work through that process if you have trust with people and know how to develop policy from a bottom-up basis and not drop it down like manna from heaven.

Listen to the full interview with mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, and find all of the mayoral candidate interviews here.

This year’s SF mayoral election is ranked choice, meaning San Franciscans can all vote for more than one candidate. If the frontrunner doesn’t get a majority of first place votes, the second place votes kick in. And that process is going to make for a lot of contenders – 16 of them, in fact. And one is Terry Baum.

Baum worked on the congressional campaign of famed feminist Bella Abzug back in 1970. She then moved to the Bay Area and started working with a lesbian theater company. In 2004 she ran as a Green candidate against Representative Nancy Pelosi for her seat in the House.

And now, Baum is taking her thoughts back to the people of San Francisco by running for mayor. KALW News’ Ben Trefny sat down with Terry Baum and asked her to start out by describing where she lives in the city.

* * *

TERRY BAUM: I’ve been living in the Castro for 33 years. It’s a fabulous neighborhood. It’s changed, of course. It’s become more gentrified over the years. But it’s a wonderful location. I’m kind of uphill from the Castro and uphill from Noe Valley.

BEN TREFNY: You say the Castro is gentrified since then. In what ways has it changed and how is that representative of what’s going on in the city, or not representative?

BAUM: Well it is representative actually. It’s become a more conservative place, politically. This was the district that Harvey Milk represented and he was a real progressive, and a populist. We’ve been represented since by Bevan Dufty and now by Scott Wiener who were really kind of mainstream machine Democrats. I don’t think that they reflect Harvey’s legacy. It’s not that easy to elect progressives anywhere, quite frankly. The other side has a lot more money, always. But it would be great if we elected somebody, not just gay, but somebody who really represented Harvey Milk’s kind of pro-labor, pro-people legacy.

TREFNY: So you are inspired by Harvey Milk and run a lesbian theater group. Then you ran in 2004. Why are you running for mayor now? Why 2011?

BAUM: I really feel we cannot go on with business as usual. Something really terrible is happening in the whole country. We are being pulled to the right by the Tea Party. The Democratic party is doing nothing to represent the interests of people in need, or to actually help people. We need the voice of another party.

The Tea Party has been very effective on the right, and yet people on the left are so – and I’m not talking about really left, like socialists, I am just talking about progressives, who want a humane sustainable society. Everybody’s been brainwashed into believing that it will be the end of the world if they don’t support whatever lesser evil the Democrats put up.

So I believe as a Green, my election as mayor would really liberate political discourse on the left. The whole country looks to San Francisco for leadership, that’s for sure. And quite frankly, they believe we are a lot better than we are. They project this fantasy onto us. It’s time for San Francisco to woman-up and become the city that outsiders think we are.

TREFNY: In summary, what are you top three priorities for the city as mayor?

BAUM: My top three priorities are corruption within the city government, transit, and housing. We have seen the corruption in terms of the sleazy “Run, Ed Run!” campaign, which was said to be a grassroots movement but was actually funded by giant donations from businesses that have fat contracts with City Hall. Now the Ethics Commission has accused that campaign of outrageous improprieties such as, you’ve seen government employees campaign for “Run, Ed Run!” but the recent attorney refuses to investigate them. This is the kind of culture of cronyism and corruption that we have at City Hall. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually, when you think this is going on in San Francisco. There is so much like that. Sadly people get turned off from politics at all when they hear about it. But it’s important to look at it, and change it.

TREFNY: What about your second priority, transit?

BAUM: Right, you can’t expect people rely on something that is not reliable. Unfortunately, Muni so far is not reliable. Buses have to run much more frequently. I want transit so great you don’t need your car. It’s not that costly. It would be a lot less than that boondoggle the central subway is going to cost. And it would mean that people could count on the bus coming when they were at that bus stop in the rain. Also, bike paths that are truly dedicated to bikes and safe with physical barriers between the bike path and the car such as they have in Amsterdam. I have lived in Amsterdam for five years.

TREFNY: Would that resemble what they have going on Market Street with some of the small barriers?

BAUM: No, it’s really complicated and the barriers disappear and the bike lane disappears. I have this imagination of the bikes as the bike lanes disappear and the bikes going up in the air, sailing in the air! (laughs) But no. There has to be real commitment to it.

TREFNY: And the third priority is housing.

BAUM: The third priority is housing. You have to be extremely wealthy to buy anything and people are forced out of San Francisco all the time. They get evicted, they just see a life of evictions ahead of them and they just go somewhere else. I am for moratorium on housing for rich people. I really believe we have enough rich people living in the city. In fact, we have 24 billionaires according to Forbes.

TREFNY: What does the moratorium on housing for rich people mean?

BAUM: It means that we don’t develop market-rate housing anymore. I mean, what is San Francisco about? We have this beautiful little piece of land. Everybody wants to live here. Are we just going to say, “The free market is destiny,” and therefore more and more rich people move in? More and more low-income and poor artists are forced to leave. Just all these rich people staring at each other? Is that what people want? I don’t think so! I think we are doing them are a favor. Quite frankly what I am talking is a vital city. I don’t know how long you have lived here.

TREFNY: I have been here for 11 years.

BAUM: Well, there’s been a lot of changes in 11 years. I think that there’s a real value in the fact that I’ve been here 35 years. There’s been a diminishing of the soul of San Francisco because so many people, the ones who create that soul, have been forced to leave. And I don’t want that soul to disappear completely.